MONTREAL, CANADA – Johanna Konta carries a consistent start to the US hard court season, where she faces Jelena Ostapenko in the first round of the Coupe Rogers.

Johanna Konta v Jelena Ostapenko [11] | Konta leads H2H 2-1

Perhaps if we were reviewing this match up a few months ago, we would be a lot more reticent, but something seems to have clicked again for Johanna Konta as she notched up a run to the quarter-final of the Mubadala Silicon Valley Classic in San Jose.

It was one of the more solid performances that finally came to an end at the hands of the in-form Elise Mertens, but there were plenty of grass roots of recovery as Konta’s ranking, which had slipped saw a slight revival to just outside the Top 40.

Jelena Ostapenko is an unpredictable opponent at the best of times, and Konta will need all those skills of problem solving to be working for her. Both are aggressive players, and Ostapenko can have a degree of patience to move her opponents around the court and punishing them with her use of angles to hit the corners and lines.

Konta has been working hard on improving her volleying, and it has been pleasing to see her add a lot more doubles into her schedule. She will need to be aggressive from the off, and her serve has to be firing as often the rest of her game follows suit.

It might be a risky prediction to pick Konta for the win – but she has had a chance to get her hard court legs under her. Ostapenko will be making her return after a long break after Wimbledon.

Lesia Tsurenko def, Katie Boulter 6-4 6-2

Katie Boulter in the first round of Wimbledon 2018 | (Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)

Despite having come through (albeit) one match in qualification, Katie Boulter looked to be no match for Lesia Tsurenko. Boulter was on the back foot almost immediately broken in the first game, and also she got a later break back, the more experienced Ukrainian faced a long battle before securing the advantage one more time on a sixth break point.

The second set started in much the same way, and credit to Boulter, she broke straight back, but was broken two more times before Tsurenko closed out the match.